Lord Ramsbotham attacks 'perverse' decision not to prosecute G4S over Mubenga death

JULY 2013: Crown Prosecution Service reconsiders decision not to prosecute G4S.

JULY 2012: Ramsbotham, former chief inspector of prisons, condemns original CPS decision not to prosecute. Peers describe UK Border Agency culture of disbelief, its abuse of torture victims, denial of legal representation, dawn raids on pregnant mothers, the perils of outsourcing, ‘loutish and aggressive’ behaviour, and that’s not all . . .

UPDATE: 9 July 2013: Jimmy Mubenga, a father of five who died after being restrained by three G4S guards, was unlawfully killed, a jury has found. The Crown Prosecution Service says it will reconsider its 2012 decision not to prosecute G4S for corporate manslaughter. OurKingdom ran this report on a House of Lords debate on 20 July 2012.

Crossbencher David
Ramsbotham, who is conducting an independent inquiry into the use of restraint, said:

“In the face of all the evidence that we have gathered, quite
apart from all the other evidence that was available, I find that CPS decision,
at kindest, perverse. Passengers reported hearing Mr Mubenga cry out that he
could not breathe and that the guards were killing him. There had been Home
Office warnings to G4S in 2006 about the dangers of using positional asphyxia.
There had been stringent criticisms by the coroner in the
case of Gareth Myatt, a 15 year-old who died in Rainsbrook Secure Training
Centre following the use of similar procedures for restraint by G4S guards. He,
too, had called out that he could not breathe before he died.”

"I find that CPS decision, at kindest, perverse" Ramsbotham

Ramsbotham called on the government
to confirm that an Inquest “will be conducted as soon as possible by an
experienced coroner, and that public funding will be made available to ensure
full support for Mr Mubenga’s family”.

Reliance, the company that replaced G4S as the Border Agency’s escort contractor after Jimmy Mubenga’s death, “admits that its staff are loutish and aggressive and lack respect for minorities and women”, said Lord
Avebury during a rigorous exposé of the Border Agency and its commercial contractors.

"staff are loutish and aggressive and lack respect for minorities and women” Avebury

Liberal Democrat Eric Avebury, who had tabled
the debate, touched
upon the “disgraceful” and “deplorable” short-term holding facilities for
children at Heathrow, the impact of budget cuts on already understaffed asylum
casework (“inevitably less time will
be available for individual decisions and more applicants will be wrongly refused”)
and the injustices inflicted upon people making family visit applications.

He
highlighted the waste of hundreds of millions of pounds on detaining migrants for
years without cause, to the detriment of their mental and physical health, and noted the
recent Medical Justice report on the detention of torture
victims whose effects included “attempted suicide, self-harm and hunger strikes”.

About the Border Agency’s
default response, to dismiss the evidence as “anecdotal and based on a small
number of cases”, he said: “Obviously
a small charity does not have the resources to carry out an investigation of
every one of the thousands of asylum seekers detained every year to see whether
each one has made a torture claim and been ignored . . . In the face of such an abysmal record of failure extending
over many years, this survey by Medical Justice is a wake-up call.”

Avebury concluded: “Sacking nearly a quarter of the staff, taking away migrants’
appeal rights, refusing applications without just cause, detaining people who
are never going to be deported and ignoring torture claims are not the route to
sorting out the enormous problems that beset the agency. The cuts should be
stopped before things get even worse and the Home Office should address the
many recommendations made by the UNHCR, the chief inspector, the Select
Committee on Home Affairs and the many expert NGOs whose wisdom is freely
available.”

Lord Dholakia (Navnit Dholakia, Liberal Democrat) said the objective of excluding those who are ineligible was being taken to extremes. “When we add to this the insatiable appetite by politicians to play the
numbers game, is it any wonder that a culture develops over time where
administrators are expected to deliver results which often lack fairness and
justice in the process?”

"insatiable appetite by politicians to play the numbers game" Dholakia

Contrary to Border Agency assurances, said the Bishop of Newcastle, “last week another case of a dawn raid being undertaken by UKBA officers was reported. A family of four, including children aged 10 and two, together with their mother who was 31 weeks pregnant, were forcibly removed from their home. The result was that the pregnant mother was hospitalised while the husband and children were removed to the Cedars detention centre in Sussex. That is not an isolated case. In April, another family was subjected to a dawn raid, resulting in another pregnant mother being restrained by four officials and the family’s removal to a detention centre.”

Meanwhile,
African clergy invited to conferences
in Britain were being turned away, “simply because their personal income
was low”, the Bishop said. “I long to see real evidence of the more
compassionate and fair agency that the director claimed was the case a couple
of months ago. It certainly does not look like it at present.”

Might a Conservative peer come to the government’s
rescue? Up stood Lord Marlesford
(Mark Schreiber): “The
problem with the staff of the border agency is not just that they are of
indifferent calibre; they have been shown to be seriously and systemically
corrupt,” he said. “Some 30 Home Office staff members have received heavy
prison sentences for misconduct in public office. The great majority were from
the border agency.”

Marlesford
warned: “there must be no question of hiving off this crucial role to the
private sector; we have already seen enough disasters on that side already.”

Baroness
Williams (Shirley Williams, Liberal Democrat) was “very cautious indeed about
outsourcing”, and especially about G4S, whose chief executive, Nick Buckles, the
Home Affairs Committee found, “has no idea of what is going on and has shown an
extraordinary ability to deny that he knows anything about it . . .one has to
ask whether such an organisation should be responsible for such sensitive
issues as the deportation, or, for that matter, the admission, of people from
other countries, many of whom have very profound histories of suffering and
torture.”

Williams
urged consideration of an amnesty “for those who have lived in this country for
five years or more with no criminal record of any kind,” an end to the practice
of returning young people soon after their eighteenth birthday to countries
such as Iraq and Afghanistan, she noted the Border Agency’s “complete failure
to recognise the special position of women in a world where, tragically, rape
has become a weapon of war” and called the lack of decent and legal means of
support to asylum seekers “an invitation for people to be degraded and for others
to exploit them and make money out of them”.

Border Agency’s “complete failure to recognise the special position of women in a world where, tragically, rape has become a weapon of war” Williams

Retired psychiatrist, Lord Alderdice (Liberal Democrat John
Alderdice) said the Border Agency “should not be a
front line as though it were the Maginot line.” Having one daughter-in-law who is
Brazilian and another who is German, Alderdice had seen how “sometimes capable,
qualified, professional young women—lawyers and so on—are left in tears. That
shows us just how abusive the whole culture has been.” One of the most senior
people involved with the UK Border Agency had told him: “It’s the culture of
the agency. The whole approach within it is abusive and it’s all about keeping
people out.” He went on: “People become like those with whom they live and
work. The UK Border Agency has not just employed G4S; it has become like G4S
and it has the same challenge.”

The UKBA "has not just employed G4S; it has become like G4S" Alderdice

Shirley
Williams urged the minister, Lord Henley (Oliver Eden), to ensure that all UKBA
staff are asked to read the Lords debate. Henley said he could not ensure it,
but he would send the transcript to chief executive, Rob Whiteman. Avebury
nailed him down: “I am sure that it will not be difficult for the agency to
find a means of disseminating the Hansard report of the debate to the whole
staff,” he said.

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